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Home Series Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology

Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology

This series seeks to capture the traditional history of science and technology, and emphasizes explanations of the hard science practices that it seeks to historicize.

The Genealogy of a Gene

Patents, HIV/AIDS, and Race
By

The history of the CCR5 gene as a lens through which to view such issues as intellectual property, Big Pharma, personalized medicine, and race and genomics.

The Age of Electroacoustics

Transforming Science and Sound
By

The transformation of acoustics into electro-acoustics, a field at the intersection of science and technology, guided by electrical engineering, industry, and the military.

Heredity Explored

Between Public Domain and Experimental Science, 1850–1930
Edited by Staffan Müller-Wille and Christina Brandt

Investigations of how the understanding of heredity developed in scientific, medical, agro-industrial, and political contexts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Sharing Knowledge, Shaping Europe

US Technological Collaboration and Nonproliferation
By

How America used its technological leadership in the 1950s and the 1960s to foster European collaboration and curb nuclear proliferation, with varying degrees of success.

Affinity, That Elusive Dream

A Genealogy of the Chemical Revolution
By

Rational Action

The Sciences of Policy in Britain and America, 1940-1960
By

The evolution of a set of fields—including operations research and systems analysis—intended to improve policymaking and explore the nature of rational decision-making.

Science and Technology in the Global Cold War

Edited by Naomi Oreskes and John Krige

Investigations of how the global Cold War shaped national scientific and technological practices in fields from biomedicine to rocket science.

Engineers and the Making of the Francoist Regime

By

How engineers and agricultural scientists became key actors in Franco’s regime and Spain’s forced modernization.

Emil du Bois-Reymond

Neuroscience, Self, and Society in Nineteenth-Century Germany
By

A biography of an important but largely forgotten nineteenth-century scientist whose work helped lay the foundation of modern neuroscience.

The Psychophysical Ear

Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840-1910
By

An examination of how the scientific study of sound sensation became increasingly intertwined with musical aesthetics in nineteenth-century Germany and Austria.

Progressive Enlightenment

The Origins of the Gaslight Industry, 1780-1820
By

An argument that the gas industry was the first integrated large-scale technological network and that it signaled a new wave of industrial innovation.

Weather by the Numbers

The Genesis of Modern Meteorology
By

The history of the growth and professionalization of American meteorology and its transformation into a physics- and mathematics-based scientific discipline.

Neither Physics nor Chemistry

A History of Quantum Chemistry
By and

The evolution of a discipline at the intersection of physics, chemistry, and mathematics.

Isaac Newton on Mathematical Certainty and Method

By

An analysis of Newton’s mathematical work, from early discoveries to mature reflections, and a discussion of Newton’s views on the role and nature of mathematics.

Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance

By

The rise and fall of the Islamic scientific tradition, and the relationship of Islamic science to European science during the Renaissance.

Lenin's Laureate

Zhores Alferov's Life in Communist Science
By

The life and work of a leading Soviet physicist and an exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of Soviet science from Stalin through Gorbachev.

Crafting the Quantum

Arnold Sommerfeld and the Practice of Theory, 1890-1926
By

An intellectual and cultural history of the birth of theoretical physics in Germany, focusing on the pedagogy and research of a leader in work on the “older” quantum theory.

Ships and Science

The Birth of Naval Architecture in the Scientific Revolution, 1600-1800
By

The first book to portray the birth of naval architecture as an integral part of the Scientific Revolution, examining its development and application across the major shipbuilding nations of Europe.

Wireless

From Marconi’s Black-Box to the Audion
By

A new look at the early history of wireless communication.

A Nuclear Winter's Tale

Science and Politics in the 1980s
By

The rise and fall of the concept of nuclear winter, played out in research activity, public relations, and Reagan-era politics.

The Path Not Taken

French Industrialization in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1830
By

Harmonious Triads

Physicists, Musicians, and Instrument Makers in Nineteenth-Century Germany
By

American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe

By

H.G. Bronn, Ernst Haeckel, and the Origins of German Darwinism

A Study in Translation and Transformation
By

A revisionist view of the history of German Darwinism examines the translation of Darwin’s work and its early reception in Germany.

The Tropics of Empire

Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies
By

A radical revision of the geographical history of the discovery of the Americas that links Columbus’s southbound route with colonialism, slavery, and today’s divide between the industrialized North and the developing South.

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